McClellan Elementary students take to the court for heart health

Banners line the McClellan Elementary School gymnasium showing the school's participation in Jump for Heart and Hoops for Heart activities for the last 17 years.
Stephanie Hacke | South Hills Record

Banners line the McClellan Elementary School gymnasium, showing the school's participation in Jump for Heart and Hoops for Heart activities for the last 17 years.
Stephanie Hacke | South HIlls Record

McClellan Elementary School last week was decorated in red, as students participated in Jump for Heart and Hoops for Heart.
Stephanie Hacke | South Hills Record

Students at McClellan Elementary School participated in a poster contest to raise awareness for the fundraising efforts for the American Heart Association last week.
Stephanie Hacke | South Hills Record

We are currently undergoing updates to our site and are working to improve your experience on all devices that you use throughout your day. If you should find a page or a story that is not working correctly, please click here.

Thank you for your patience,

TribLIVE.com Team

A competitive game of hoops inside the McClellan Elementary School gymnasium taught students the importance of staying fit while raising money for a good cause.

The more than 300 students at the school last week played a game of basketball or spent a half-hour jumping rope to raise money for the American Heart Association, through the “Jump for Heart” and “Hoops for Heart” programs. The students also learned that exercise will help them to stay healthy.

Banners line the gymnasium walls, showing the school's participation in the programs for the last 17 years, physical education teacher Marie Bartoletti told the students. In those years, the school has raised more than $130,000 for the American Heart Association, Bartoletti said. McClellan students raised more than $5,500 this year.

“That's a lot of money,” Bartoletti told the students, who applauded the schools efforts. With that money, “they figure out how to help people with heart problems.”

The gymnasium walls last week also were dotted with hundreds of cutout paper hearts. Scribbled inside were the names of family members, neighbors and acquaintances who suffered heart attacks or died from cancer. Each student had a personal reason they were jumping rope or playing hoops.

“In honor of my Pappy, because he had a heart attack,” the pencil markings inside one heart stated.

“I'm a heart hero because of my family,” another child scribbled inside the lines.

“As you jump for the next half-hour, I want you to think about those people,” Bartoletti told the students.

The youngsters said it was important for them to collect donations from family and friends who have heart problems.

“If we don't help them, they could die,” said Trystan Alava, 10, a fourth-grader.

For their donations, some students received bookmarks, T-shirts and even free tickets to a Pittsburgh Pirates game.

The class that collects the most money gets a pizza party and the student that raises the most money gets a stuffed bear.

Bartoletti's passion for the programs are what makes them such a success every year, Principal Justin Liberatore said.

“And it's one that the kids love — they're jumping rope. They're playing hoops,” he said. “It's one that we'll always do.”

Stephanie Hacke is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-388-5818 or shacke@tribweb.com.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.